Notable Software

06 Apr 2022 - New York, NY

Thanks to the authors, innovators, and others involved in creating & maintaining the following list of ingenious software programs (& associated, supporting hardware & software infrastructures).

Notable Software Programs

AOL Instant Messenger AIM for chatting
DC++ for media & software sharing
Carbon Dating the Web (compliments of Old Dominion University)
Firefox Sync (client-side encrypted! [1])
ICQ for chatting
iTunes for music sharing over a shared network (early versions)
LimeWire for media & software sharing
Napster for media sharing (early versions)
P!rate B@y for media & software sharing (via torrent file distribution)
Signal for end-to-end encrypted chat (text messaging) -> Not quite, though, b/c it is centralized (both the AWS servers and the company which rents them)
Tor Browser for anonymity & security (end-to-end encryption) (e.g., for social justice whistle-blowers)
VLC Media Player for universal media playing & viewing
Wayback Machine (compliments of The Internet Archive)
WikiLeaks for anonymous & secure (end-to-end encrypted) social justice whistle-blowing

[1] The most compelling reason to use Firefox Sync is that it is client-side encrypted. Mozilla stores opaque encrypted blobs that it is entirely unable to decrypt. Law enforcement agencies request that data from time to time, hoping to obtain browsing history, only to be turned down thanks to the encryption. (disclaimer: former Mozilla security) –jvehent (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38793414)

To be continued…

And, an appeal to any engineers & other stakeholders with the power to change the following software for the better (& for the betterment of society at large):

Notably Bad (Intentionally Evil/Evil by Design?) Software

Alphabet (Google) Gmail (not end-to-end encrypted)
Apple iCloud (not end-to-end encrypted! So, even though Apple iMessage is end-to-end encrypted, this most basic privacy requirement goes away if you sync it to iCloud, which I assume most people do so they don’t lose their text messages if something happens to their phones.)
Apple iPhone espionage backdoor (see: Operation Triangulation)

To be continued…

Features of Notable Software Programs

Decentralized and distributed (not centralized)
End-to-end encrypted (esp. for communications)
Immutable (esp. for ledgers that require immutability)
Standalone EXE whenever possible
Uncensored/uncontrolled content (each user can block what they don’t wish to see)

Revolutionary Concepts in Software

Data transparency (e.g., open-source data, open-source code)
End-to-end encryption

We don’t want companies; we want foundations that simply disappear after everything is distributed. –John McAfee, Computer Programmer

NB: Without end-to-end encryption, assume there is a third party in between the sender & recipient who has access to (listen, read, record, etc.) the entire message information, similar to switchboard operators in the early days of telephoning. Unfortunately, this practice has by no means gone away; in fact, it’s ubiquitous (e.g., the vast majority of Internet traffic, Google searching, etc.); it’s merely become more esoteric to the general public (barring the technically savvy who know about it). These software design & implementation decisions constitute serious matters of basic human rights-to-privacy violations which enable large-scale espionage of the general public (surveillance state), as proven by the likes of Edward Snowden & others, enacted under the guise of corporate profiteering (via personalized advertisement campaigns) by private industry and terrorism prevention by governments (a la USA Patriot Act). It is never ethical, just, moral, or wise to sacrifice basic human rights for the perception of a possible gain, monetary or otherwise; in fact, this is the road towards a Big Brother dystopia. A significant percentage of the Western canon of literature warns us not to embark down such roads and depicts the negative (& often ultimately catastrophic & deleterious) implications of what results from ignoring or actively & decidedly overruling this general rule of thumb which many of us (at least, in Western societies) are taught in school, especially during our youth. Politically, Europe is doing right by its citizens by attempting to gradually restore some of the privacy rights that Internet technology giants, governments, & others have eroded over the last few decades. In closing, to ironically quote Google, a key privacy violator - namely, their own original motto, taken from their original code of conduct (long since removed) -, “Don’t be evil.”

Notable Software